Life in France seen through the round window of a straw-built grand design.

Willkommen Bienvenue Welcome

Welcome, gentle readers.

This is an everyday tale of regular folk, who moved from Sheffield to the deepest Corrèze in France Profonde and thence to the rather more cosmopolitan Lot in search of something… different. We certainly found it.

The Lot is an area of outstanding natural beauty. Reputedly, a famous TV globetrotter was asked where, of all the places in the world he had visited, he might return to. He answered, ‘The Lot’.

Fans of Channel 4’s Grand Designs will know that we built a somewhat quirky straw bale house-with-a-view here in the Lot, not far from the celebrated Dordogne river. You can read all about it in my book, Bloody Murder On The Dog's Meadow, or watch the re-runs of the programme on More 4, or view it on You Tube.

After a break in the proceedings to write a book or two, this blog now takes the form of an everyday journal. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don't (but the art school dance goes on forever). I hope it will give you an entertaining insight into what it's like to live in a foreign country; what it's like in the slow lane as an ex-pat Brit in deepest France.

I shall undertake to update this once or twice a week, unless absent on leave. Comments always welcomed, by the way, but I do tend to forget what buttons to click in order to answer them.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

April: Endurance Tests

Whan that Aprille...
The miraculous month has delivered yet again. There's a riot of buds and new
leaves going on. After the annual tour of inspection, I'm delighted to announce
that the perennials have proved hardy once more and that the new gingko tree
has survived its first (albeit disturbingly mild) winter.

A present from our next door neighbours – to mark either
our 20 years in France or 25 years of marriage, I'm not sure which (though the
smart money's on the latter) – I planted it personally in an exposed spot where
the wind from the north howls around the corner of the 'master bedroom'. I've
been troubled by its perceived delicacy since the leaves yellowed and fell
around late November.

I'd been under the misguided impression that it was an
evergreen, but apparently not. The misunderstanding probably derives from my
still limited comprehension of the French language. Just like the old days, in
fact, when I used to invent news heard on the radio alarm clock from snippets
of information that I did actually understand.

No, the gingko or maidenhair tree is definitely deciduous
and the yellow leaves are a sight to behold in places like Tokyo, where it is
the official tree. I guess the tree must have been on show at our local cinema
during the screening of one of the more charming and delicate films we've gone
to see this season. Les Délices de Tokyo
is one of those lovely foodie films, like Babette's
Feast and the brilliant Big Night,
that centres around our love of nutrition.

In this case, the subject is dorayaki. I learnt that they're a kind of pancake sandwich filled
with a frankly unappetising red bean sauce. The plot, such as it is, involves
the poignant working relationship between a disaffected short-order dorayaki cook and an old woman with a
winning way with sweet beans. Her deformed hands are the clue to her dark
secret: that she has spent much of her life in a local leper colony.

Of course, when customers get wind of this, the sudden
craze for dorayakis falls off as
suddenly as it boomed. And the old woman must give up the part-time job that
has brought her so much unexpected fulfilment at the end of her life. So...
there were many dorayakis and many
beautiful yellowing gingko trees in evidence. And really, there's no reason why
our new gingko shouldn't have survived this perturbed winter, since it's the
last surviving relative of what fossils suggest are the oldest tree on earth.

The gingko is budding. And the grass is growing at a
phenomenal rate thanks to the seasonal mix of sun and ferocious showers. My
afternoons are mapped out for at least the next two months to come. Mowing and
strimming, strowing and mimming. And weeding all those tenacious mauvaises herbes. The other weekend I
even glued our fragile fruit trees in an attempt to ward off the annual attack
of the kamikaze ants. But then came an April shower to wash away the glue,
which I must now re-apply during a settled sunny spell.

April is the month when I also bring out the Honda
strimmer from its long hibernation in the cave.
Ah, my trusty tool! The ancient Japanese ceremony of the first ignition is
always a tense affair. Will it, won't
it...? This year, in fact, it didn't. Once I might have been inclined to
kneel beside it and weep. Maybe even plunge a sharpened kitchen knife deep into
my bowels. But during my 20-year relationship with this essential gadget, I
have learnt a thing or two. I took out the spark plug, cleaned it off, gently
pulled the string a few times, even added some choke. And hey presto!

Thanks to the precision of Japanese engineering, the
grass around the house is looking shorn and tamed for a few days.
Notwithstanding the unwelcome rain, the immature fruit trees are in blossom.
The ants have not yet climbed over the corpses of their dead colleagues to get
at the succulent petals or whatever it is that attracts them. The irises are
resplendent, the rose is in leaf and climbing fit to flower and all,
horticulturally speaking, is currently well.

It's a good job that my age exempts me from the French
comprehension test that my fluent wife had to sit in connection with our
application for dual citizenship. Our daughter is also exempt, thanks to her
baccalaureate. And not just any old bac,
but vingt sur vingt. 20 out of 20 for
her French oral. So I asked her to double-check that I hadn't misunderstood the
guidelines. Yes, she confirmed, it seems that sexagenarians and above are
exempt. Presumably we don't need to converse, we just sit and dribble.

Thank the president, too, judging by my wife's feedback.
It was a glorious morning when I drove her to Limoges for her TCF at the CNAM.
Her test de connaissance français at
the... whatever CNAM stands for. There was just an early hint of indignation in
the air. She was paying €115 for the privilege of sitting an exam to prove that
she had a basic comprehension of the language in which she has been working for
nearly 20 years. It's not right; just not right. Shouldn't the mere fact of
having endured without the assistance of the state in the land of the bigoted
bureaucrat be enough?

After hunting in vain for a Lidl in which to replenish
our dwindling supply of Parmesan cheese and Greek yoghurt, I sat and read in
the reception area of the CNAM, a grim building of dark airless corridors
characterised by the click-click of high-heeled shoes. It was after midday. Our
little fancy that the appointed time of the exam was test enough had been exposed
as a gag. (If you phoned up to query that a French exam could possibly start at
midday, you passed.)

My wife emerged grim-faced at around 12.30, the only
obvious British expatriate among a clutch of Africans and West Indians. Well? She shook her head. The oral went
well, as it would for someone with such a gift of the gab. She introduced herself
for a couple of minutes, then prepared and delivered a kind of verbal
role-play, all of which was recorded for some faceless examiner.

But the written test was a lot harder than expected. You
listened to a conversation between two people talking quite rapidly about a
subject as dry and as dull as industrial output, then answered 29 multiple
choice questions in 25 minutes. One wag quipped that this contravened equal
opportunities legislation. The po-faced adjudicator said she would pass on his
comment.

Not knowing the pass mark, Debs thinks she might have
failed. Which would be a travesty, since she is as fluent as fluent can be. We
will know in two to three weeks. It's true that industrial output doesn't coche her boxes, but maybe she has done
better than expected. If she does fail, however, she has determined not to sit
it again. My fine upstanding spouse will not be paying another €115 to be
humiliated.

Let us now praise resolute women, the world over. But
before we do so, I feel I must mention The
Secret in Their Eyes. Every now and then you start watching a film and you
know that it's going to pass multiple tests of time. I watched with mounting
excitement this Argentinean film about an unsolved murder and its repercussions
on the lives of those involved in the case. Two hours or so later, I felt like
I had been dragged through a car wash backwards. In the process of wringing out
my emotions and hanging them out to dry, José Campanella's film, which
unbeknownst to me had won an Oscar for best Foreign Film after it came out in
2009, reminded me why cinema is probably still the greatest art form of the
modern age.

In between those sweet showers of Aprille, while I await
a dry spell for my next attack on the remaining wild grasslands behind the
house, I should really be knuckling down to the business of writing a crime
thriller to beguile audiences the world over. Or finishing the current
e-learning project. Or gluing the fruit trees. Alas poor day-dreaming dilettante, I knew him well...

Camp Street

About Me

Born in London, raised in Belfast, further-educated at Exeter and Sussex universities, I'm a professional dilettante, a family man and tireless dog-walker. You can listen to Lost & Found, my monthly radio show on www.expatsradio.com and check out my author page on Amazon.